


we fear anything that looks like the sun

by Ara (WalkUnseen)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: AKA the Real OTP, And Trent Really Does Love the Sound of His Own Voice Huh, Animal Abuse, Animal Harm, Basically Animals Are Harmed In This, Blood, Broken Bones, Depictions of animal death, Dogs, Enchantment Magic Used on Dogs, Fresh Into Hell Bren, Human Being Hunted by Dogs, Hurt/Minimal comfort, Maybe Level 2 Evocation Wizard Bren, Playing Loose And Fast with D&D Mechanics, Speculations of What Ikithon Training Sessions Could Have Been Like but Who Knows, Torture, Trent Ikithon's POV, Trent x Being Preachy, some gore, sorry - Freeform, violence against animals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-12 15:13:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19231666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WalkUnseen/pseuds/Ara
Summary: “I will give you a headstart.”Bren takes a shuffling step back, glancing between him and the dogs with all the twitchiness of prey. “Sir, I-- I do not--”“Run."





	we fear anything that looks like the sun

**Author's Note:**

> no beta this time lads, i don't wanna burden anyone with this garbage. sorry in advance for mistakes. 
> 
> Title from 'Virgo Self-Esteem Broadcast' by The Flaming Lips. 
> 
> "You think the forces have control.  
> Well, there are no forces  
> And they have no control.  
> Yes, it's just you and me.  
> We fear anything that looks like the sun,  
> And we, by our own design are helpless.  
> This is the beginning."
> 
> And large thanks to the bad brain discord server peeps for inspiring me to vent Some of the Darker Ikithon Ideas and Theories in Fic format.

"They will not show you mercy, Ermendrud." 

He snaps a finger back, the give nearly brittle, easy. The pop followed by a hissed inhale and the shaky gulps of heaving lungs. Trent moves to the ring finger, Bren's pinky already swollen, an angry, vicious, and growing red.

The boy squirms in the chair, his other arm writhing in the iron cuff and Trent _tsks_ , petting over the back of the sweat-slicked hand under his grip before splaying the palm down again. Tipping the finger up, and back, until he can feel the knuckle strain and tendons tighten under his fingertips. 

"They will not show you kindness." 

The cry that rends the air is more of a dog's yelp and he wishes Bren would learn to hold his tongue sometimes. But this is just the beginning. It hasn't been that long under his tutelage. The boy will learn. 

"They will do everything you can imagine--" He cracks the next one quickly, listens to the harsh thud of Bren's skull against the high-backed chair as the young man writhes again. "--and more."

The word _'please_ ' is a tremulous note in the air, _'no's'_ hiccuped in the quiet. He allows it, even if it is irksome to listen to. This is the first time he's done this particular vein of torture on any of them, and he knows how much a broken finger can hurt, let alone multiple. He won't tolerate it the next time he does this though.

"They will make you wish you were dead." He breaks the last one, silently impressed when no further cry comes from the boy. "And you must be able to endure." 

He pins the useless hand under his own again, slides his other beneath the crooked and purpling fingers. Pushes them up until Bren keens, and then yells, and then _begs._

He leans close, sure to hold Bren's own watery stare as he pushes the fingers back further. "Do you understand?" 

"I--" Bren cuts himself off with a harsh pant, pulling at the cuff around his other wrist, ankles knocking against the chair before bare heels turn to pushing at the stone. 

Trent shifts his grip, releasing the tension on Bren's hand, plucking up his index finger and wrenching it back, the bone shifting with a merciless click. "Do. You. Understand?" 

"Yes-- _Herr_ \-- s-sir… _bitte_ \-- plea-- I--I--" Bren babbles, bottom lip bloodied where he's bitten it, sweat shining along his brow. 

"Gut." Trent releases him and Bren sags back into the chair as he undoes the restraints. He stands once he's finished, gesturing for Bren to follow. "Get up." 

He waits for the boy to gather himself, spares him a chance to stare at his hands, the mess that's been made of them, and maybe even wonder why he isn't moving to heal them. And he lets the question fester. 

Bren breathes out a small, sound, nearly an inquiry, as Trent makes his way back out of the room and down the hall. He doesn't answer or acknowledge it, just listens for the bare footfalls of the boy to follow, knowing Bren will, at the least, heel without question.

He waits until Bren stumbles into pace beside him, arms rigid at his sides, and he knows the boy is holding back how much they hurt. He's at least learned not to say anything about it. 

"Casting sometimes requires us to push past our earthly threshold for pain." Trent says, sparing Bren a glance as he leads them to the back door. "You must realize that pain is up here--" He taps a finger against Bren's temple, dismissing the way the boy shifts away, before holding his own hand up and glancing down to Bren's mangled ones.  "Not here." 

The last vestiges of dusk flood in as he pushes the door wide, bathing them both in liquid fire where he ushers Bren outside before him. The hounds tethered behind the house immediately leap to their feet at the first crackle of dried leaves. Not barking, but observing, ears cocked forward and noses eager where they stare unerringly. 

Trent flicks his hand, the door creaking shut, untouched behind them, and all three hounds now stood at attention. The loose tethers around their necks pulling taut where they've trotted forward; eager for orders.

"You learn that, and I promise you can endure anything." 

The boy shifts his weight, eyeing him and then the dogs. "But, how do I--?" 

Trent makes his way towards the animals, letting the half-question go unanswered, taking his time to slip the rope from one's throat, then another. Until all three wait; untethered and looking up at him from where they've settled back on their haunches. 

Trent drops the ends of the ropes, lets them slither and settle amongst the leaves with a dry hiss as he glances back to Bren. And the boy hasn't moved any closer, warily eyeing the creatures behind Trent with wide eyes.

"You push it away." Trent explains, taking a step forward, satisfied when he hears the echo of paws shifting on earth behind him. "You ignore it, it is not a part of you. Yes, your hands may hurt now, but do they really?" 

His small entourage follows eagerly where he steps up close to Bren, the harsh breathes of the hounds grating in his ears. And he can see Bren's nostrils flare, a muscle in his jaw jumping and fingers twitching, wanting to curl, but they simply can't any longer.

Trent grabs Bren's shoulder, squeezes in what could be a reassuring manner, but he feels him go rigid beneath his fingers, like he's touched a live coal to the young man's skin. 

"Ask yourself this." Trent leans close, close enough he can see every minute flick of Bren's eyes. "Is pain more important than your survival?" 

Bren just stares, pupils as blown as a rabbit's caught in the tightening slip of a snare, still trembling under his palm. So minutely anyone else may have missed it, but he doesn't miss even a single moment.  

Trent finishes with a patronly pat on his shoulder before withdrawing, the hounds shifting on their feet behind him, awaiting a command they know will come. The tremor of Bren's chin betrays the uncertainty there, another attempted curl of his fingers lost with a quick inhale, but no whine, all of which Trent notes with the dull intrigue of a teacher whose student is finally learning. 

Trent snaps his fingers and the largest of the mutts comes to stand beside his left leg. He rests his hand between it's ears, musing his fingers through the fur, eyes never leaving the tentative hold of Bren's own. 

"Influence is easy, laughably so at times." He watches Bren's gaze jump to the hound. "All you have to do is control the right one and you can sway the entire pack."

He can see there's already an unease there, maybe born of a past experience with dogs-- a hunting party gone wrong, a boy lost in the woods and stumbling upon a pack tailing their quarry. Whatever the case may be, that fear, settled across the tense line of Bren's shoulders and the small hitch of his chest, the one that Trent's watched him try to suppress since he freed the dogs-- all of it will only make this more challenging. But Bren is promising. Of them all, he has shown to be the most adaptable.

Survival isn't something that can be so easily taught, sometimes it is instinctual-- and Bren runs on more instinct than some. But Trent can only wonder; how will he survive this? 

“I will give you a headstart.” 

Bren takes a shuffling step back, glancing between him and the dogs with all the twitchiness of prey. “Sir, I-- I do not--”

He narrows his eyes. “ _Run_."

The boy stumbles back, falling into the leaves, scrabbling and fumbling, before getting his feet beneath him again and tearing off into the woods on coltish legs. Trent counts the seconds, gives him a handful, lends him plenty, and looks to the hound beside him. Scratches it behind its ear as he whispers, his other hand weaving a pattern in the air. 

_"Mach ihn platt."_

They all let out their own series of brays and howls, a hunt announced as they take off with the huffing breaths of predators and the heavy footfalls of sure beasts. 

He knows the hounds won't work so fiercely without a small push in the right direction, no matter how trained they are. They are still animals, and the first spark of fire, should Bren manage to conjure it, even in a situation such as this, may send them retreating. This ensures they won't, and that they won't stop until one or the other falls first. 

And he intends to watch.

Trent snaps his fingers, calls his familiar to him with ease, pulling the infernal fiend to this plane with their contract. The gyrfalcon circles overhead before taking off into the woods after the sounds of snarls and the brittle cry of branches. 

Bren hasn't made it far, barely into the thick of the woods, the falcon trailing behind the hounds that slather and snap at his heels.

A sharp yelp and the crescendoing crack of brittle tree limbs belays Bren's fall as he goes tumbling over himself onto the forest floor, dog's teeth latched around his ankle. He lashes out quickly,  fire already dancing on his palms, and Trent silently commends his quick reflexes as Bren shoves his hand against the hound's snout and wrenches his leg free. 

Bren stands, stumbling backwards and freezing, the other two dogs closing in, flanking him from the other side. Their jowls pulled back, teeth bared, saliva dripping down in strings that glisten like rubies in the violent dusk. 

Perhaps he was too hasty. 

Bren is still young to this, he still has much training to do. And he would rather not _fully_ break the boy now. Showing a hand of mercy may also plant the idea of power-- that he holds all of their leashes in this. That he, ultimately, decides their fates here. 

Trent snaps his fingers, breaking the hold on the two smaller canines. Still watching through his familiar's eyes as he moves his finger, pointing the largest mutt towards the two who have dropped their aggressive approach. 

He can see Bren is confused when the hound snaps at the others, chases them off with teeth and snarls. But the boy is resourceful, he takes the time to dig around in the pouch at his hip, deadened fingers scrambling for the components Trent gave them all. 

Bren clumsily draws forth a diamond, a small one, one that Trent handed them in the confidence they would use it to practice a particular spell. And as Bren nearly drops it, hands shaking, fingers barely able to maneuver the ways he needs them to. Nearly biting through his lip to stay quiet as he backs away from the hound who's attention has swung back to him-- Trent wonders if he will be able to cast it at all.

He clicks his fingers together again, prompting his familiar to perch on a different branch, to change the angle. So he can see the way Bren attempts to move his hand in delicate patterns over the diamond settled in the center of his bruised and bloodied palm. 

Bren slips on an exposed root, breaking his concentration, and the mutt slinks closer and closer. It's snarls only growing louder and Trent can hear Bren's frantic mutterings become rushed in tandem. 

And then the boy pauses, eyes locked on the inky, dead, and black-drowned irises of the hound. He can see the moment Bren draws the conclusion, the boy's shoulders hiking up, head shaking, backing up further.  

"Do not hesitate." Trent snarls reflexively, forgetting himself for a moment, using a trick his own teacher taught him, voice thrown to seem as if it's spoken through his familiar. 

He breaths in, quick and harsh, the crisp curl of autumn settling heavy in his lungs. Bren's attention has turned to flicking between the falcon in the tree and the dog who's halted in it's advance, eyes still blank and lifeless, drool and blood-flecked teeth on display. 

"Inaction is the death of neutral men." Trent continues; calmer, more refined, eyes narrowed at the scene unfolding somewhere in the woods. "You must _act_ , you must make a choice here. Your life or this animal's, which do you value more?" 

Bren's eyes flick back and forth, calculating-- always calculating, and Trent partly admires the intellect there, but thinking will get him killed one day. Trent prompts the hound closer, and closer. Until it's backed Bren into a thicket of trees and a proverbial corner the boy can't merely think his way out of. 

He knows the moment resignation settles in, when Bren's face turns blank, lips pressed into a neutral line, eyes stuck straight ahead on the target and no longer wondering elsewhere. He doesn't rock on his heels or fidget, Bren merely raises the diamond again, the words leaving him effortlessly this time, fingers, swollen and cracked as they are, still moving sloppily, but with intent. 

Trent waits, rapt and intrigued as the diamond glitters, the chroma flashing in the heart of it. And Bren goes to hurl it, throw it towards the hound, the spell seemingly complete, when it suddenly bursts into heat and light mere inches from him. 

The ensuing flash is so bright, that for a moment Trent withdraws from his familiar's gaze. Blinking and concluding that the somatic components must have been off enough that it backfired quite magnificently, before returning to look through the falcon's eyes up in its perch. 

And the clearing is scorch-marked, leaves curling into cinders and the bark on the nearest trees blackened and charred. The hound having been thrown backwards and still collapsed at the base of a tree, fur-singed, and Bren, sprawled on his back, on the opposite side of the clearing. 

The boy rouses first, slow and groggy, with a groan and a harsh cough, before scrambling up right, his eyes wild and frenzied. Locking onto the hound that twitches, its paws scrabbling at the leaves, before heaving itself to its feet, ignoring its raw and singed flesh as it stands. 

Bren looks down at his hands, paws at the component pouch at his side, eyes flicking up to the hound as it shakes its head and gathers its wits, the eyes still bled fully black and lifeless. The whimper catches Trent off guard and he turns his attention back to Bren. The boy now doubled over, clutching at his wrist, teeth grit, and some of his fingers are nearly purpled, the flesh an angry red and curled at the fingertips.

The hound whirls on the sound, ears pressed back, lips peeled and teeth on display as it circles back towards Bren. Bren turns to the dagger sheathed on his other hip, fumbling it free, the blade immediately slipping from useless fingers and tumbling to the forest floor. 

He scrabbles in the dirt for it and Trent frowns as the hound encroaches closer and closer. Bren, at the least, never keeps his back towards it, constantly maneuvering so he's never fully vulnerable, keeping the dog in sight at all times as he workshops the issue at hand. 

Bren tears a strip off of his uniform and Trent wrinkles his nose at the sudden act, before tilting his head as the boy winds it around his fist and his fingers, the knife loosely held in his grasp.  Trent can tell it hurts when Bren tightens the fabric, pulls it taut so that he's locked his hand into a fist around the dagger's hilt. 

_Resourceful._

And somehow the less privileged ones always are. Using what little they have to make do and scrape by. To ultimately survive. 

It's why he chooses the ones at the bottom of the barrel. He's never cared to look for potential in the rest of the children milling about in the Academy's halls. It's far harder to motivate those ones anyways, not when they're already at the top. No. It's the poor farmer's son, the militant man's daughter, the local butcher's kid. Those are the ones that always mould to this in the most intriguing ways. 

"You were nothing in that village, you know." Trent says, using the same trick as before, filling the clearing, the one that Bren and the hound are currently circling each other in, with his voice. "I pulled you out of the dirt, I gave you _opportunity._ Do you want to go back to that? To only ever being a farmer? A foot soldier?" 

Bren shakes his head at Trent's words, eyes screwed shut, before the click of teeth sends him lashing out again, stumbling backwards and away. He swipes out at the hound when it draws too close again, his own teeth grit and bared, nearly as feral as it, as he dodges its jaws once more. 

"I know that look in your eyes. We are not so different, you and I. You want to be strong, you want to be worth something, you want to make them proud, don't you?" 

The two are back to circling each other in the fire-blemished clearing once more. The hound mock-lunging, Bren brandishing the dagger in front of him, the glint of steel like teeth. 

"You want them to look up to you and see something to strive for, not sneer down at. You are not some dirt-smeared, bleak-eyed cattle. You are not one of them, lost amongst the herd." 

The hound lunges again, jaws latching around Bren's arm, and the two topple to the forest floor in a mess of limbs.

"You are meant to be so much more than just a poor man's son." 

It ends with Bren pinned under the dog, his knife arm caught in its jaws. The boy beats at its chest with his free hand, claws at it with dull nails best he can, and Trent tuts at the sloppy desperation of it all. Prompts the hound to bite harder, bear down harder, and Bren yelps, squirming under the mutt. 

The dog is relentless, uncaring of every effort, even as Bren tugs at its ears, clouts it across the head with the heel of his palm, and kicks at it best he can. Even when he manages to work the knife free from its impromptu wrappings into his waiting palm, clumsy fingers doing their best to curl around the hilt. Even when he slashes it across the muzzle, a splatter of blood falling across Bren's face in a scattered constellation of crimson. 

It does not budge throughout it all, and the knife fumbles out of Bren's fingers onto the dirt where he paws for it blindly. 

"Come now, will you just lay down and die at the teeth of some animal?" He asks, watching Bren pull and push at the scruff of the hound slathering around where it's latched on tight. "You are above this creature, above the creatures out there, the ones that pretend they aren't anything like dogs, yapping away at the heels of their masters." 

Bren's fingers find the hilt of the dagger once more, nearly sending it spinning away across the earth, but thankfully catching it and dragging it closer. Wincing and hissing through his teeth as he maneuvers his fingers around the hilt once more.

And Trent's nearly impressed. He knows the pain the boy must be in, that the adrenaline, the flight and fear of it all, is pushing him past the limitations of his predicament. 

"Fight against it." Trent says, nearly feverently, delighted when Bren manages to bury the dagger into the dog's midsection, wrenching it towards its sternum with the answering splatter of viscera. 

"Destiny is nothing but the choices you make. It does not control you. One day, you will learn to bend reality to your will. And one day, I will teach you how to make the world _kneel_ at your feet." 

The hound, still under the thrall of the spell and wholly unphased by the mortal wound, snarls around the bones and flesh it's caught a hold of and decided its unwilling to part from. Even as organs pulse through the wound, even as Bren yells and buries the knife between its ribs; again, and again. Ichor, bile, blood, and throes of red slop onto him, coating him in sliding layers of it, as he thrashes under the beast. 

Until, Bren finally manages to get a knee under it, kicking out the thing's back leg with a vicious strike before throwing it to the side. It's jaws tearing free before snapping shut on nothing with a click as it tumbles and slides to a halt on it's side in the underbrush. 

Bren stands, trembling; hands a discolored blue-black and pulsing red, immobile and stiff at his sides. The hound scrabbles at the dirt, tossing its head, eye rolling in it's socket, the spell dropped-- there's no need for it any longer. 

The pupil is visible once more, blown and tremulous, no longer an unnatural shine of empty black against the setting sun, and Bren stares down at it, where it whimpers and whines, gurgling. Its jaws parting in its own silent plea. 

Bren kneels, braces the hilt of the dagger with his palm, holds it over the dog's eye, and Trent can still see hesitation there. In the way his hand wavers, the point inches from granting mercy, from finally ending this.

And it ends as quickly as it began, the dagger buried to the hilt in the dog's eye, down to the root of it's skull. The air still and silent in the wake of its final, huffing breath.

Bren slowly unwinds the fabric from around his palm, the knife left buried in the mutt, blood trailing and bubbling out from beneath it in a river amongst the fur. Trent watches Bren stare down at it, sides heaving, crimson splattered and glistening across the bridge of his nose and dripping down his neck, his arms and torso coated in a thick layer of ichor and bile.

"Someday, you will learn that pain is nothing, Ermendrud. It is nothing in the face of what you can gain, what you can become..." 

His words seem to shake Bren from his reverie, and he grabs the hound's hind leg, wincing, teeth grit as he hauls it through the leaves, the drag like the hiss of a rattlesnake. Trent watches through his familiar until he can no longer see the boy, snapping the falcon away until it's useful again. 

He waits at the edge of the woods until he can hear that dry rattle and shift of decay, and the heavy breathes and pained huffs of air as Bren hoists home his quarry. The boy drags it to him, lays it at his feet, and heels there, trembling and panting, sides heaving, eyes flicking back to the woods before settling back on the dog and remaining. 

Trent crouches, brushing a hand through the dog's scruff before curling a hand around the pommel of the knife.

"You kill who you need to, you lie where you need to, you claw your way up whatever cliff, whatever obstacle, whatever lays in your path, and you do not ever look back at the bodies it took you to get there." He continues, glancing up to see the boy's eyes pinch, brows furrowing for a moment before smoothing into a blank slate once more. "None of that matters where you will end up." 

He twists the knife in the dog's skull, watches Bren flinch out of the corner of his eye, and wrenches it free. "Use _who_ you must, and use _what_ you must." 

Blood splatters the sleeves of his own robes, but it's no matter, he can easily clean them later. Even the dogs can be fixed up as well. He has his ways, and it is easier to start this task with animals and gradually work them up to more. 

And Bren hasn't moved, hasn't spoken since he dropped the carcass at his feet like any good hunting dog would. And Trent is nearly proud of Bren's progress here. _Nearly._

"You do what you have to." Trent swipes the blade clean on his sleeve, standing and holding it out to Bren with a smile that's more for show than anything else. "And you survive." 

The curls of condensation leave painted and parted lips, the boys eyes still locked on the steaming spill of viscera, on the red staining his hands and dripping from his fingers. A blood-dipped hand-- tremoring, dirt-caked, and swollen-- curls around the end of the blade, pulling it free from his grip, sullying the steel once more as Bren tucks it back into its sheath. 

The glaze in his eyes, the far away mist of a fresh-faced killer, is intriguing. As if Bren has put more value to the life of this mutt than the lives of whatever fowl and hoofstock he no doubt had to quarter in the hovel he plucked the boy from. Murder is only ever as potent as the man who gives value to the blood on his knife. And Bren is not a born killer. Not in the way he shakes and stares, quaking, eyes rabbit wide. 

He places a hand on the side of Bren's face. Feels the jump of muscles under his palm and the sticky slide of ichor as he cups the boy's jaw, and brushes a thumb through the mess to reveal a stripe of pale, freckled skin under it all. 

"Do you understand?" He breathes, leaned close, stooped to eye level with the blues that tremble and fracture; an ice field bombarded with new sensation and the unexplainable burden of mortality coating Bren's fingertips now. 

He can tell, with the way the Bren's eyes harden, jaw steeling, back straightening, cracked fingers curling into loose, clumsy fists at his side; that he is an adaptable one. That he will prove valuable and worth the investment.

"I understand, Herr Ikithon." Bren intones, inflectionessly, meeting his eyes with every steely inch the boy can probably muster. 

Trent can't help the small quirk of his lips

"Sehr gut," he praises, patting Bren on the cheek before withdrawing, musing the blood that comes away between his fingers with an amused huff of air. "Now get washed up. Send Eodwulf to me when you see him." 

Bren nods, a small hesitation flickering across his face before he nods. "Of course, sir." 

Bren turns to leave and Trent stops him with a hand on his shoulder. Pulling free a rather costly potion and settling it in Bren's hand, waiting until the boy's managed to cradle it in his palms before releasing him. 

"For your hands." Is all he says and he can see that confused flicker, the scrunch of Bren's brows; that little space between them wrinkling in a way that betrays more than the boy could ever know.

"D-- danke…Herr--" 

"Dismissed." Trenr cuts him off before he can stumble his way through gratitude. 

This is practicality. He can't have Bren's hands injured for what he has planned tomorrow, the experiment won't work if they're still not healed. 

But it doesn't stop Bren from dropping his shoulders, the tense line of his spine bowing; and Trent narrows his eyes at all of it. All of those little tics of vulnerability in him. He'll get rid of them eventually.  

He watches Bren go, potion in hand, crimson still slipping down his skin, plipping against the dead blanket of leaves littering the ground. Lingers on the leftover handprint where the boy grabs the edge of the door and retreats back within, on the remaining two hounds that eye Bren and then him.  

And he looks down at the dog that Bren dragged back with him. Its one good eye blank and lifeless, rolled up to some heaven he can't see, tongue lolled out of its mouth, flies already coming to inspect the cooling corpse. 

One day Bren will do this task effortlessly. 

And that day, they will move on to things that can beg.

**Author's Note:**

> now it's back to hashing out my other fics that I should really update since it's been... months now,, and stop having minor breakdowns over them. 👌


End file.
